Il Soviet 1920/7

Il massimalismo parlamentare è uno di quei problemi che per la sua insolubilità appassiona le menti quanto più esse sono acute e sottili, le quali si compiacciono appunto nell’affannosa ricerca di una soluzione brillante. A questo problema si è dedicato con speciale cura il Direttore dell’Avanti!, il quale forse ha in gran parte il non piccolo merito di avere inventato la formula geniale, divenuta un problema del momento, che occorre trovare una soluzione: soluzione poi che non lui, ma gli altri debbono tradurre in pratica.

Questa traduzione è fonte di continue incongruenze che l’inventore della formula fa derivare da difetto degli esecutori e che la maggior parte di costoro non osa fare risalire alla incongruenza originale della formula, perché questa formula essi accettarono in un ora in cui non accettarla era quanto mai pericoloso. Probabilmente parecchi di costoro allora non si resero conto che quella formula, che pareva semplice, diveniva nella pratica una specie di quadratura del cerchio.

Siamo appena ai primi mesi di massimalismo parlamentare e già la forza delle cose e degli avvenimenti dimostra luminosamente che in parlamento o si fa del riformismo o non si fa nulla. Si è visto chiaramente che impedendone il funzionamento realistico che consiste nella discussione ed approvazione di piccoli progetti di legge, sia con l’imperversare dei discorsi di carattere politico generale, sia con la violenza, non si turba in alcun modo il regolare andamento della macchina statale borghese riposto essenzialmente nel potere esecutivo, che agisce anzi con maggiore libertà per quanto riguarda la sua principale funzione senza l’ausilio del parlamento. Si è visto ancora che la tribuna parlamentare è assai meno alta ed atta per la propaganda delle idee, perché in parlamento la propaganda, se non si fa da borghesi, si fa ai borghesi. Dei discorsi dei socialisti pronunziati in esso non si pubblicano che mediocri riassunti, i quali non tutti leggono, ed anche quando siano letti non hanno certo né possono avere l’efficacia che avrebbero se i lettori potessero essere ascoltatori.

Da ciò consegue che la parte riformista del gruppo parlamentare, seguita in ciò dai più intellettuali dei massimalisti, tende a riprendere il vecchio stile parlamentare, e i parlamentari dernier cri massimalisti non sanno a quale santo votarsi e come uscire dall’imbarazzo nel quale si sono cacciati. Essi cominciano ormai ad accorgersi che la massa, alla quale si erano fatti balenare miracolosi eventi, è delusa, e d’altra parte non vogliono continuate ad accreditate presso di essa la convinzione che sia opera rivoluzionaria quella di insultare l’on. Cappa o far sanguinare il naso dell’on. Mauri.

Gli uni si danno da fare con le interrogazioni e con la presentazione di disegni di legge magari sul divorzio, gli altri… gli altri aspettano la invocata soluzione del logogrifo.

Il Direttore dell’Avanti! scampoleggia rimproverando, richiamando, e con lui tutti i massimalisti chiedono un miglior funzionamento del gruppo parlamentare, il quale malgrado il direttorio, malgrado la divisione in sezioni di specializzati, funziona male palesando una profonda malattia che ha bisogno di buone ricette per guarire.

Una di queste ricette, in conseguenza dell’ultimo richiamo scampoleggiato, ce la appresta il compagno Ciccotti.

Ciccotti propone che il partito socialista, e per esso il gruppo parlamentare socialista, debba opporre per ciascun problema di attualità una soluzione “sua”, conforme ai suoi metodi di “classe”, alle soluzioni proposte dai partiti borghesi, e debba proporre tali soluzioni anche quando sia convinto che “esse non troveranno posto e possibilità nell’attuale organizzazione politica, ecc.”. Se il partito socialista deve proporre le sue soluzioni anche quando sia convinto che esse non troveranno posto, è implicitamente ammesso che vi siano delle soluzioni socialiste “sue” con metodi di “classe” che possano essere compatibili coll’attuale ordinamento, prima di tutto. In secondo luogo, in che cosa questo metodo si differenzia da quello riformista?

Non hanno sempre i riformisti prospettato dei problemi di attualità le soluzioni proprie? La differenza sarebbe in questo che i massimalisti a questo punto si fermano e cioè, dopo aver esposta la propria soluzione, quando questa non sia accettata non vanno oltre, non cercano cioè di migliorare almeno quella che viene proposta. Così facendo, l’accademia resta più che mai accademia, sia pure massimalista.

L’Avanti! accoglie e fa sua la proposta Ciccotti nella sua nota, e la completa chiedendo che il gruppo parlamentare si costituisca in organo tecnico della legislazione, il quale debba prospettare sotto forma di progetti di legge le soluzioni socialiste che non il parlamento borghese, ma la rivoluzione proletaria darà ai problemi che oggi affaticano l’umanità.

Indiscutibilmente il compagno Serrati è uomo di spirito ed ha scritto la nota in un momento di gran buon umore.

Ve lo immaginate voi il gruppo parlamentare che si riunisce per compilare progetti di legge sui problemi dell’oggi perché siano approvati…a rivoluzione avvenuta? Approvati da chi? Vuol forse il compagno Serrati che i deputati socialisti approntino uno stock di progetti di legge da essere presentati ai futuri Soviet?

Ma non è puro utopismo tracciare, nell’ambiente e col procedimento democratico borghese, le leggi del futuro stato proletario?

Il massimalismo elezionista parlamentare è capace, come si vede, delle azioni più… futuriste.

Ed ora attendiamo pure altre ricette: più che la nostra critica, la realtà s’incaricherà di sfatarle nella bancarotta completa di questo esperimento di parlamentarismo, profanatore dei principi e degli emblemi comunisti.

The working-class disturbances of the past few days in Liguria have seen yet another example of a phenomenon that for some time now has been repeated with some frequency, and that deserves to be examined as a symptom of a new level of consciousness among the working masses.

Instead of abandoning their jobs, the workers have so to speak taken over their plants and sought to operate them for their own benefit, or more precisely without the top managers being present in the plant. Above all, this indicates that the workers are fully aware that the strike is not always the best weapon to use, especially under certain circumstances.

The economic strike, through the immediate harm it inflicts on the worker himself, derives its utility as a defensive weapon for the worker from the harm the work-stoppage inflicts on the industrialist by cutting back the output which belongs to him.

This is the state of affairs under normal conditions in the capitalist economy, when competition and price-cutting force a continual increase in production itself. Today the profiteers of industry, in particular the engineering industry, are emerging from an exceptional period in which they were able to amass enormous profits for a minimum of effort. During the war the State supplied them with raw materials and coal and, at the same time, acted as sole and reliable purchaser. Furthermore, through its militarization of factories, the State itself undertook to impose a rigorous discipline on the working masses. What more favourable conditions could there be for a fat profit? But now these people are no longer disposed to deal with all the difficulties arising from shortages of coal and raw materials, from the instability of the market and the fractiousness of the working masses. In particular, they are not disposed to put up with modest profits which are roughly the same or perhaps a bit below their pre-War level.

This is why they are not worried by strikes. Indeed they positively welcome them, while mouthing a few protests about the absurd claims and insatiability of the workers. The workers have understood this, and through their action of taking over the factory and carrying on working instead of striking, they are making it clear that it is not that they have no wish to work, but that they have no wish to work the way the bosses tell them to. They no longer want to be exploited and work for the benefit of the bosses; they want to work for their own benefit, i.e. in the interests of the work-force alone.

This new consciousness that is emerging more clearly every day should be held in the highest regard; however, we would not want it to be led astray by vain illusions.

It is rumoured that factory councils, where they were in existence, functioned by taking over the management of the workshops and carrying on the work. We would not like the working masses to get hold of the idea that all they need do to take over the factories and get rid or the capitalists is set up councils. This would indeed be a dangerous illusion. The factory will be conquered by the working class – and not only by the workforce employed in it, which would be too weak and non-communist – only after the working class as a whole has seized political power. Unless it has done so, the Royal Guards, military police, etc. – in other words, the mechanism of force and oppression that the bourgeoisie has at its disposal, its political power apparatus – will see to it that all illusions are dispelled.

It would be better if these endless and useless adventures that are daily exhausting the working masses were all channelled, merged and organized into one great, comprehensive upsurge aimed directly at the heart of the enemy bourgeoisie.

Only a communist party should and would be able to carry out such an undertaking. At this time, such a party should and would have no other task than that of directing all its activity towards making the working masses increasingly conscious of the need for this grand political attack – the only more or less direct route to the take-over of the factory, which if any other route is taken may never fall into their hands at all.

V

With this article we propose to conclude our exposition, though we may resume the discussion in polemic with comrades who have commented on our point of view in other newspapers. The discussion has now been taken up by the whole of the socialist press. The best articles we have come across are those by C. Niccolini in Avanti! These articles were written with great clarity and in line with genuine Marxist principles; we fully concur with them.

The Soviets, the councils of workers, peasants (and soldiers), are the form adopted by the representative system of the proletariat, in Its exercise of power after the smashing of the capitalist State. Prior to the conquest of power, when the bourgeoisie is still politically dominant, it can happen that special historical conditions, probably corresponding to serious convulsions in the institutional arrangements of the State and society, bring Soviets into existence – and it can be very appropriate for communists to facilitate and stimulate the birth of these new organs of the proletariat. We must, however, be quite clear that their formation in this manner cannot be an artificial procedure, the mere application of a recipe – and that in any case the simple establishment of workers’ councils, as the form of the proletarian revolution, does not imply that the problem of the revolution is resolved, nor that infallible conditions have been laid for its success. The revolution may not occur even when councils exist (we shall cite examples), if these are not infused with the political and historical consciousness of the proletariat – a consciousness which is condensed, one might almost say, in the communist political party.

The fundamental problem of the revolution thus lies in gauging the proletariat’s determination to smash the bourgeois State and take power into its own hands. Such a determination on the part of the broad masses of the working class exists as a direct result of the economic relations of exploitation by capital; it is these which place the proletariat in an intolerable situation and drive it to smash the existing social forms. The task of the communists, then, is to direct this violent reaction on the part of the masses and give it greater efficiency. The communists – as the Manifesto said long ago – have a superior knowledge of the conditions of the class struggle and the proletariat’s emancipation than the proletariat itself. The critique they make of history and of the constitution of society places them in a position to make fairly accurate predictions concerning the developments of the revolutionary process. It is for this reason that communists form the class’s political party, which sets itself the task of unifying the proletarian forces and organizing the proletariat into the dominant class through the revolutionary conquest of power. When the revolution is imminent and its pre-conditions have matured in the real world, a powerful communist party must exist and its consciousness of the events which lie ahead must be particularly acute.

As regards the revolutionary organs which will exercise proletarian power and represent the foundations of the revolutionary State on the morrow of the collapse of the bourgeoisie, their consciousness of their role will depend on the extent to which they are led by workers who are conscious of the need for a dictatorship of their own class – i.e. communist workers. Wherever this is not the case, these organs will concede the power they have won and the counter-revolution will triumph. Thus if at any given moment these organs are required and communists need to concern themselves with setting them up, it should not therefore be thought that in them we have a means of readily outflanking the bourgeoisie and almost automatically overcoming its resistance to the ceding of power.

Can the Soviets, the State organs of the victorious proletariat, play a role as organs of revolutionary struggle for the proletariat while capitalism still controls the State? The answer is yes – in the sense, however, that at any given stage they may constitute the right terrain for the revolutionary struggle that the Party is waging. And at that particular stage, the Party has to fashion such a terrain, such a grouping of forces, for itself.

Today, in Italy, have we reached this stage of struggle? We feel that we are very close to it, but that there is one more stage to go through. The communist party, which has to work within the Soviets, does not yet exist. We are not saying that the Soviets will wait for it before they emerge. It could happen that events occur differently. But then we will run this grave risk, that the immaturity of the party will allow these organs to fall into the hands of the reformists, the accomplices of the bourgeoisie, the saboteurs and falsifiers of the revolution. And so we feel that the problem of forging a genuine communist party in Italy is much more urgent than the problem of creating Soviets. To study both problems, and establish the optimal conditions in which to tackle both without delay – this too is acceptable, but without setting fixed and schematic dates for an almost official inauguration of Soviets in Italy.

To accomplish the formation of the genuine communist party means sorting out the communists from the reformists and social-democrats. Some comrades believe that the very proposal to set up Soviets would also facilitate this sorting out process. We do not agree – for the very reason that the Soviet, in our view, is not in its essence a revolutionary organ. In any case, if the rise of Soviets is to be the source of political clarification, we fail to see how this may he accomplished on the basis of an understanding – as in the Bombacci proposal – between reformists, maximalists, syndicalists and anarchists! On the contrary, the forging of a sound and healthy revolutionary movement in Italy will never be accomplished by advancing new organs modelled on future forms, like factory councils or soviets – just as it was an illusion to believe that the revolutionary spirit could be salvaged from reformism by importing it into the unions, seen as the nucleus of the future society.

We will not effect the sorting-out process through a new recipe, which will frighten no one, but by abandoning once and for all the old “recipes”, the pernicious and fatal methods of the past. For well-known reasons, we feel that if a method has to be abandoned, and expelled along with non-communists from our ranks, then it should be the electoral method – and we see no other route to the setting up of a communist party that is worthy to affiliate to Moscow.

Let us work towards this goal – beginning, as Niccolini puts it so well, with the elaboration of a consciousness, a political culture, in the leaders, through a more serious study of the problems of the revolution, with fewer distractions from spurious electoral, parliamentary and minimalist activities.

Let us work towards this goal. let us issue more propaganda concerning the conquest of power, to build awareness of what the revolution will be, what its organs will be, how the Soviets will really function. Then we can say we have done truly valuable work towards establishing the councils of the proletariat and winning within them the revolutionary dictatorship that will open up the radiant road to communism.